Waving, not drowning

Annette asked about the image on the masthead: it's The Great Wave, by the artist Hokusai (1760-1849).

About this site

This blog owes its existence to the PSMW Summer School held at Lampeter in June 2009. The theme of the conference was Leadership in Turbulent Times; an account of the event is in the PSMW magazine Catalyst, No. 16 (download here). As the article on pp 22-23 describes, I ran a poetry workshop as a fringe event and found a wealth of creativity and enthusiasm among the participants, mainly drawn from middle management in public bodies in Wales. With that audience in mind, I argued that although poetry is often perceived as emotional, wild and unstructured, there is also a strong tradition of reflective thought and precision in expression; drawing on this latter view, I argued that writing poetry was a good discipline for managers. Using the haiku form as one which provides a structure but is highly adaptable, participants were asked to create a poem that captured a moment of insight or transformation.

Using poetry to capture the changing moment

View more presentations from mlocock.

This blog has been created to continue the fruitful activity of that workshop, and will host further contributions by those who have an interest in the use of poetry as a thought tool.

Martin Locock